Leaked Clevo Boot Guard Keys Threaten Firmware Integrity, Binarly Reveals

In late February 2025, Binarly received a report of a suspicious incident within the UEFI ecosystem. A public entry in the SupplyChainAttacks repository pointed to a leak of private Boot Guard keys embedded in firmware for Clevo-manufactured devices. The source of the discovery was a post on the Win-Raid forum, where a user found the private keys exposed within a publicly available BIOS update package.

These suspicions were soon confirmed: investigation revealed that the binary file BootGuardKey.exe contained two private keys, also duplicated in separate PEM files. The extracted key modules matched those found in the Boot Guard Key Manifest and Boot Policy Manifest present in Clevo firmware. This implies that a malicious actor could use the leaked keys to sign a tampered firmware image, which would then pass platform-level integrity checks, effectively bypassing Boot Guard protection.

Binarly identified 15 affected firmware packages spanning 10 unique devices. All utilize BIOS developed by Insyde and are built on Clevo ODM platforms. Among the impacted systems are several Gigabyte G5, G6, and G7 models—including the recently released 2025 G6X 9KG.

Notably, the list of affected devices includes both outdated systems and those with current firmware versions—indicating that the compromised keys are still in use across actively supported products, thereby elevating the severity of the threat. Also present are two generically labeled system BIOS packages—NoteBook System Firmware—which are not tied to any major brand, suggesting potential involvement of additional OEM vendors.

It is important to emphasize that this issue is confined exclusively to Clevo-based platforms. In Binarly’s extensive firmware dataset—encompassing over 200,000 firmware packages from various manufacturers—no similar leaks were observed among other vendors. This strongly suggests that the incident stems from a key management failure specific to a single ODM.

Binarly submitted a vulnerability disclosure under identifier BRLY-2025-002 to the CERT Coordination Center (CERT/CC) on February 28. However, the case was closed just days later without detailed explanation. Binarly has announced plans to disclose full details of the incident, along with recurring key management failures, at the upcoming RSA Conference.